May 06, 2007

Porn and Abortion: Two Things That People Don't Think Women Should Have the Right to Do

To elaborate a bit further, here are my comments from this thread at Alas, a Blog, here:

Let me break it down the way I see it. Franke-Ruta sees women making choices that she says cause them distress later. Her proposed solution is to forbid those women from making those choices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the Carhart v. Gonzales decisions, sees women making choices that he says cause them distress later. His solution is to forbid those women from making those choices. In both cases, the rationale is based on the idea that women can't inform themselves of the risks and benefits of the decision, that others (pornographers or doctors) will mislead them about those risks and benefits, so the women's consent is not truly informed, so legislatures are right to step in and substitute their judgment for that of the women.

In the abortion context, assuming for the moment that the informed consent criticism were actually valid (when in fact it's a sham), the correct answer would have been legislation requiring proper disclosure. In the porn context, assuming for the moment that the age-impaired-judgment criticism were actually valid (when in fact it's a sham), the correct answer would have been legislation requiring proper disclosure.

To claim that taking legal rights away from women in the name of protecting them is feminist, and that anyone who wants them to keep their full legal rights is misogynist, turns reality on its head.

Just to complete my thesis, what I think is going on here is that Franke-Ruta and others are actually trying to address the heteronormative aspects of porn, and restrict the consent of women to make money from porn as an instrument to address the larger societal problem. I think this is clear from Amp's comment:

This is not just about individual rights; it’s about our entire culture.

In other words, common good before individual good. It's not about some spurious negative effect on the women, it's about the environment for all women that women who appear in porn contribute to.

In my view, it is simply unacceptable - morally and legally - to sacrifice the fundamental speech rights of a few in order to achieve some larger societal goal. If you don't like the expression you see in the porn that those women choose to make and sell, then the answer is more and better speech, not to restrict the expression of those you disagree with.

You can easily extend the analogy: Anti-choicers see women's decision to have late-term abortions not just in terms of a woman killing (per their strawman argument) a otherwise healthy, viable fetus, but as a step down a slippery slope toward societal acceptance of infanticide. It's a crazy fear, but they really fear it. And in the anti-choice case, they're also willing to sacrifice the fundamental rights of women to achieve their societal goals. I am opposed to it when liberals do it and when conservatives do it.

The human brain does not finish developing until age 25. You're much more likely to make an impulsive, short-term, dumbass decision before you're 25. Choosing an abortion before you're 25 is more likely to get you ahead in life--to college, to a more stable, adult realtionship, to an eventual kid that you can handle and love. Being prevented from choosing an abortion is going to either lead to the opposite or giving up a child for adoption, which has to be much more wrenching in most cases. I don't thing the data is there to support the idea that women are going to really regret not getting into porn when they were 18.

I don't thing the data is there to support the idea that women are going to really regret not getting into porn when they were 18.

The principle is autonomy. I don't know what the longterm effects of restricting the speech of any given young person is. And I don't really see how the government can measure when violating someone's constitutional rights is "worth it".

The problem with the argument "You're not fully adult until 25" is that it applies to too much. Why don't we just raise the age of majority to 25 and leave it at that?

This idiocy has pushed me all the way to endorsing what I had at first thought a shallow idea: when the "left" and the "right" agree on something, run like hell away from it. Especially if the "left" and "right" are embodied in the same person.

"The human brain does not finish developing until age 25. You're much more likely to make an impulsive, short-term, dumbass decision before you're 25."

On average, that's true, in terms of probability. However the ability to engage in analytical reasoning and making predictive assessments, which is located primarily in the frontal lobes of the neocortex, begins phasing in during early adolescence. That area of the brain becomes increasingly active as it matures; a 24 year old is not like a 14 year old in terms of cognition.